City native applies for vacant seat

LAURINBURG — The Scotland County Board of Education will have three applicants to interview on April 21 to fill the seat vacated earlier this year by Darwin Williams.

During the application period, which ended on Thursday, Raymond Hyatt, Robert Malloy, and Dannie S. McInnis submitted letters of interest in serving out Williams’ term, which will end in 2016.

McInnis, who applied earlier this week, is a Laurinburg native and retired Scotland County Schools employee. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in school counseling from The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

“I would like to be on the other side of making the policies and procedures for a while since I have been on the other side and I know how things work,” she said. “I thought it would be a good opportunity to give back to the community.”

McInnis has worked as an administrative assistant at Central School, a counselor at Carver Middle School, and for more than 15 years as a counselor at North Laurinburg Elementary, her final position before retirement. She is currently serving as an interim counselor at Pate-Gardner Elementary, a position that will end with this school year.

Both Hyatt, owner of Hair-itage Styling Salon in Laurinburg, and Malloy, a former Laurinburg police chief and former president of the Scotland County NAACP chapter, are running as candidates for election to the board seat currently held by Darrel Gibson.

If elected to the school board, Malloy hopes to bring impartiality and greater concern for the general community to the board’s deliberations. When he filed for election to the board of education, Malloy told The Laurinburg Exchange that hopes to contribute to the board an impartial viewpoint and concern for the general community.

“I think that a lot of the decisions that are made appear to be made somewhat with personal thoughts involved when the school board, in my mind, needs to be focused on the children and the schools themselves,” he said. “There’s another entity that should be included, and that is the community.”

Hyatt, who serves as the vice president of the Laurel Hill Elementary School parent-teacher association, hopes to advocate for his fellow parents as well as the school staff he serves in his business.

“I serve countless residents in the Scotland County area, many of whom are parents and teachers,” Hyatt said. “I want to be their voice. I want to see the quality of education in Scotland County maximize its potential.”

All three applicants will be interviewed by the school board in open session. The meeting begins at 6 p.m.

Mary Katherine Murphy can be reached at 910-276-2311, ext. 17. Follow her on Twitter @emkaylbg.